The road to mainstream adoption of the Bitcoin is a long and hard one, but the Bitcoin is seeing global adaption every single day for the payment system as well as for the Blockchain technology. Now BitGold, a site allowing people to buy and sell gold peer-to-peer, announced it will be using the Bitcoin technology for their site.
BitGold will be using the Bitcoin technology to offer free vault storage with a payments-network attached, enabling a banking platform for gold. BitGold has been in beta mode for a few months, but has finally been made available for the general public, fully insured with no storage fees and lots of payment methods.
BitGold received $3.5 million in funding in December of 2014 to take their platform to the next step, with the funding round being mainly funded by PortVesta Holdings, PowerOne Capital and Soros Brothers Investments.
“We are excited to unveil the BitGold platform, an architecture and technology that’s taken years of careful planning and execution, which now allows users to seamlessly use gold again as a store of value and medium for payments. As a global asset, gold is recognized in nearly every culture as a long term protector of value, but has been a poor medium of exchange compared to the advances in money technology.” said Co-founder and CEO, Roy Sebag.
“We felt that gold needed the modernization and mobilization that’s now happening in the global payments revolution. We have built a financial services platform that is as close to being counterparty-free as possible, enabling economic transactions within the existing global financial system to be settled in full reserved gold bullion.” He added.
BitGold is a third-party provider who doesn’t take responsibility for deposits and such, but simply provides a service-platform for those interested in buying and selling gold with others around the globe in a safe environment, where all transactions are accounted for.
Simply put, the customers can store their gold where they wish in the world and then buy more or sell some through the platform. The gold will be easy to acquire and access through the platform and funds will be instantly accessible.
“At BitGold we have a mission to democratize global access to gold for stable savings, and to make gold useful in micro-transactions using the internet or mobile phones,” said co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Josh Crumb.
“No matter where you live in the world, gold has held value over time relative to costs like food and energy that we require as humans, making it one the most important savings tools for most of the human population. We believe that by broadening access to a commodity-money that holds value we can help combat the rise in wealth inequality and the short-termism.” Crumb added.
Seeing a company using the Bitcoin technology shows how far the Bitcoin industry has come as whole, with more industries being inspired to use the technology as well. This could lead to the Bitcoin gaining some more mainstream acknowledgement, which can only benefit the Bitcoin as a whole in the long run.
It will be interesting to see if the concept will become a success in the gold industry or if it is ahead of its time, similar to what the Bitcoin is currently seen by many.
